For sale: Ma Barker's last home

Wednesday

For more than 80 years, the Bradford family has kept their modest summer home on Lake Weir in impeccable shape.

For nearly 80 years, the Bradford family has kept its modest summer home on Lake Weir in impeccable shape.

Built in 1930 by Carson Bradford, the Ocklawaha home has hosted generations of Bradfords, who enjoyed respites on the lake and dug for treasure.

The treasure they sought wasn’t the odd bottle cap or lost coin, but the rumored booty buried by the home’s most famous guests: Arizona “Ma” Barker and her son Fred.

The pair, part of the notorious Barker-Karpis gang, were killed in the home on Jan. 16, 1935, by FBI agents in one of the agency’s most storied shootouts.

Recently, the Bradford family, which has owned the property for nearly a century, put it up for sale.

Stirling Sotheby’s International Realty is accepting bids for the 9½-acre property. The suggested minimum bid is $1 million, but all offers will be considered. Bids will be accepted until Oct. 5.

“We think the ideal purchaser would have a strong sense of history. They should use the house for certain entertainment, because it should be opened up, some, to the public. We hope it’s someone that would preserve the house and get enjoyment of Lake Weir and the property,” Carson Good, a family representative, said in a video provided by the listing company.

The 2,016-square-foot home, which was rented to the Barkers in November 1934, is the jewel of the property and has remained largely unchanged.

Much of the furniture that was in the home during the 1935 shootout remains, some with bullets still imbedded. The walls, which were peppered with upwards of 2,000 bullets, were repaired, but bullet holes are still obvious.

“No one’s really ever lived there. They all just visited from time to time and it continued that way through multiple generations. It was a family cottage that everyone just left everything alone,” said Mark Arnold of Stirling Sotheby’s in Orlando.

He said the family made the decision to sell after most of the older generation had died and younger family members had left the area.

“It’s probably time to find somebody else to take care of the property going forward,” Arnold said.

He hopes to get interest from museums or foundations to preserve the property, but also sees how a developer might be interested.

“We can see a developer coming in and building a series of cottages and operate it as a bed-and-breakfast,” he said.

The home became part of history after an hours-long shootout between the Barkers and FBI agents, who tracked the group to their hideout.

Ma Barker’s purported role in the gang’s string of bank robberies, kidnappings and murders made the case a sensation in its time and has endured for decades.

Her true role is disputed, with surviving gang members later painting her as a doting mother. But according to FBI reports written after the shootout, neighbors would see Barker come out of the house every morning and carefully look around corners.

When Ma Barker rented the house from Carson Bradford, a South Florida businessman, her group was on the run. The FBI was hot on their trail after they kidnapped a prominent Minnesota banker.

Edward Bremer was held for nearly a month in 1934 and released after the gang received a $200,000 ransom. The FBI went hard after the gang, purportedly due to Bremer being the son of a close friend to President Franklin Roosevelt.

After “Doc” Barker, another of Ma Barker’s sons, was arrested on Jan. 8, 1935, the FBI found a map of Florida with the Ocala area circled. Other members of the gang told FBI agents that Doc kept talking about this great place on a lake where they had hunted and fished and even went after a massive alligator named “Ole Joe.”

The FBI was able to track down the Ole Joe myth to Lake Weir and staked out the area. One of the agents wrote in his report that he exchanged pleasantries with Fred Barker as the agent posed as a fishing tourist.

In the early morning hours of Jan. 16, 1935, agents surrounded the home and as they approached the front door, Fred Barker opened fire.

A barrage of gunfire from both sides continued for several hours. When it was done, Ma and Fred Barker lay dead in an upstairs bedroom next to one another. No one else was injured.

A cache of weapons and $14,000 was found in the house, including several $1,000 bills on Ma Barker’s body.

Over the years the family has opened the house from time to time, but it has remained mostly a family getaway. Except for air conditioning and a kitchen remodel several decades ago, the home has stayed the same.

Family folklore has it that the house is still haunted by Ma Barker. Reports of furniture moving and hearing voices at night have persisted over the decades. In the 1970s a medium went through the home and convinced Fred Barker’s spirit and those of others to leave. Ma Barker refused.

For information about the sale of the home, as well as its history, visit mabarkerhouse.com.

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